Mrs. Delarayne flushed a little in anger. At any other time she would have laughed with the rest over such an incident, but in the circumstances it was too intimately connected with the cause of her anxiety to be passed over in silence.
"Leo, you really are a pest," she exclaimed. "You simply cannot leave Denis alone one minute. Really, Denis, if you'll excuse my being outspoken, I'm surprised at your encouraging the child!"
"What it is to be young and good-looking!" sighed Vanessa, casting a sidelong glance at the young gentleman in question.
"All right, Peachy!" Leonetta snapped, vexed and almost outraged by her mother's bald statement of the plain truth, "it's only an accident; you needn't be so cross."
Mrs. Delarayne was on the point of administering a stinging lesson to her flapper daughter,—a lesson which that young person would certainly have remembered to the end of her days,—when, suddenly, Wilmott appeared on the lawn in front of the marquee.
"Yes, Wilmott, what is it?" Mrs. Delarayne enquired irritably.
"If you please, mum, will you come and see Miss Cleopatra; she's fallen down in the billiard-room."
"Fallen down in the billiard-room?" everybody repeated.
The whole party were on their legs in an instant.
"Now, what are you all going to do?" cried Mrs. Delarayne, never more herself than when a heavy demand was laid upon her self-possession. "Please remain where you are, and get on with your tea. I'll go and see what's happened. Agatha!"